Just a Hufflepuff
by writergal24
Summary: Follows a non-canon Hufflepuff from the Trio's year from her first year, to her life after the war. She's not a brave Gryffindor, she's not a cunning Slytherin, she's not a genius Ravenclaw. But that doesn't mean she can't do anything, right? Oneshot. Minor language.


**Partially inspired by Oliver Boyd and the Remembrall's song "Just a Hufflepuff." Only not really.**

**Disclaimer: Clearly, I'm not J.K. Rowling. Clearly, I don't own Harry Potter.**

**Because, after all, _I'm_ just a Hufflepuff.**

You were in the same year as Harry Potter at Hogwarts.

You were in Hufflepuff, though, and you're not even sure whether or not he knew your name. You had classes together, but the poor boy had way more to worry about than that girl on the other side of the classroom.

You loved Hogwarts. It was your home. It wasn't that you had a bad family or anything – you loved your family. They were great. You and your brother used to bicker and laugh and your parents loved you more than anything. But you never felt the same connection to your family as you did to your friends at Hogwarts.

At Hogwarts, you did really well in classes. You were actually pretty smart. But you never cared about test grades or intelligence, which is why the Sorting Hat didn't put you in Ravenclaw. He told you that you had the brain of a Ravenclaw, though, and that always made you feel pretty good.

Because some people were mean to Hufflepuffs. Hufflepuffs weren't in the powerhouse Gryffindor, and they couldn't even be hated because they were Slytherins. To some people, they were kind of just _there_.

But you loved your house. You loved your friends and your common room and Professor Sprout and everything that came with being a Hufflepuff.

And so you grew and flourished and made friends and made mistakes. And in your fourth year, you listened to the story of your house mate and how he'd been murdered, and you hate to admit it, but you doubted the story just a little bit. Could You-Know-Who really be back?

You found out the next year – the same year that you were made Hufflepuff prefect – that yes, he was. You-Know-Who was back and he was growing and all of a sudden you found yourself in the middle of a war.

Your parents said it was just like last time.

You didn't want to hear about last time – you just wanted the war to be over. You didn't like fighting. You didn't like violence. You just wanted to finish up your last few years at Hogwarts in peace.

But that wouldn't happen.

The next year, Dumbledore was killed.

That was when the war really seemed to hit everyone. Dumbledore had been killed. Dumbledore, who stood for all that was good at Hogwarts.

Seventh year started off with the news that Snape was headmaster and Harry Potter and friends had left.

And seventh year trickled by and you watched as the Gryffindors spoke out and fought back, but you didn't feel like you could do that, because you weren't a Gryffindor. You were just a Hufflepuff. You weren't one to step up and tell the Carrows that they were ruining the school, or to point out that everything they were teaching was wrong, or to stop them from torturing a first year. So you stayed quiet and tried to support the Gryffindors to your fullest from backstage.

On May 2nd, all hell broke loose.

You didn't stay to fight.

You'd always regret it. Maybe one of the deceased would still be living if you'd stayed to fight. Maybe you could have saved a life.

But it wasn't as though you were doing nothing. You made sure that all of the younger kids got out and kept them under control once you arrived in Hogsmeade. You helped send owls to parents and comfort the crying first years and convince Aberforth that a few more people _would_ fit.

And then dawn came and so did word that You-Know-Who was dead. Harry Potter had defeated him. The war was over.

You cried.

* * *

You cried once more the next time you stepped foot in Hogwarts. It was not the Hogwarts you had been in the day before. There were blown-up walls and destroyed pictures and staircases that no one could walk up. There were bodies from both sides and there were tears everywhere.

McGonagall called all of the prefects to the headmaster's office later that week to discuss closing the school. There was so much work to be done. So much destruction.

And this is where you really stepped up.

They couldn't close the school, you protested. Where would kids go to be educated? Hogwarts was already home to so many. They couldn't just shut it down.

You could run the restoration committee. Of course you could.

And so you were entrusted with the impossible task.

* * *

You started by contacting all of the architects that you could find, hoping to find one that was attached enough to Hogwarts to help rebuild it for little to no money. You also enlisted a bunch of Ravenclaws from your year and the one below it – a lot of them were into that kind of stuff, even if they weren't professionals.

Then you set up a program for kids that were already in Hogwarts to stay there for part of the summer to help with rebuilding. If nothing else, they could help with cleaning up rubble.

Then you watched, or _supervised_, as your home slowly got put back together; as brick stacked on brick, and wall connected to wall, and stairs led to places rather than midair.

You worked with Hagrid to build him a new hut and had some students help him rebuild his gardens and fences to keep the animals in. You made sure that Professor Sprout had taken stock of all of the plants she'd lost and helped to replace them. You worked with the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to make sure she was all set up, and you helped the new Potions professor restock the cupboard. You talked to the house-elves and made sure all of them were happy and that they had no complaints (they didn't).

You replaced paintings that had been ripped to shreds. You replanted trees that had been torn from the ground. You built new bridges. You built new walls.

By the end of the summer, you were tired.

By the end of the summer, Hogwarts was almost back to normal. Maybe even better than normal.

But there was still something else. You went to McGonagall's office in mid-August and told her what the school was still missing: a memorial.

She agreed, and then changed the topic rather suddenly. Filch, she said, was old. She wanted him to retire. You thought that might be a good idea. Nobody had ever liked Filch anyway, not that you told her this. Then she really shocked you – she asked if you wanted to be the new caretaker.

The role wouldn't be exactly the same, she explained. You would just help to oversee the rest of the restoration projects and the building of the memorial. There would be downsides, like keeping track of detentions and keeping the castle relatively clean. And Peeves had to be taken care of and you might need to work with the Heads on a patrol schedule, but other than that, you would be like the supervisor. You'd make sure everything was running smoothly.

You wouldn't have to stay for too long, McGonagall finished. Just a few years till everything was running smoothly again and they could find a new person. If you even wanted the job.

Yes, you wanted the job. Hogwarts was your home, and you were loyal to it. Maybe your friends wouldn't be there anymore, but if you had to work, this sounded like a great way to do it. You hadn't figured out what you wanted to do in your life anyway. That's why you weren't in Slytherin or Ravenclaw. You didn't make plans, you didn't have clear goals, you weren't all-knowing. You worked hard and did what you were told, but you'd never figured out what you enjoyed.

But you'd enjoyed working at Hogwarts the past few months, hadn't you?

So you took the job. You watched as the students passed through the year. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were there, too, and you talked to them from time to time. It was a bit strange seeing the younger kids that you were friends with and being superior to them, but you enjoyed the job a lot. The memorial was going up faster than you would have imagined, and you were proud of it. It looked good. You were honoring all of those people that had so valiantly given up their lives, honoring all of those who had been brave enough to fight when you hadn't been.

You helped to establish a program called Dumbledore's Army. You weren't in it the first time around, but you felt that it was important for all of the kids to have the knowledge of how to fight. It was different than Defense Against the Dark Arts – there were no books and no lectures. Just practice. They would meet with groups of around ten, once a week, at night, with kids from their age group.

By the end of the year, Hogwarts was new and improved. Everything worked. Nothing was broken. The kids were happy. The memories of darker times were still there, but they'd already begun to fade into the background. You felt productive.

* * *

It was four years later. The first years from the war were now fifth years. You still enjoyed your job, but the walls of Hogwarts had begun to be a bit constraining, rather than inviting.

That summer you escaped to London. You'd grown up in Scotland. You hadn't been to London very often – only when you were boarding the Hogwarts Express, really. You spent the summer seeing the sights, reconnecting with old friends, making new ones, and having fun. The Leaky Cauldron was a frequent stop, but you went to all different kinds of places. You even hung out in Muggle London. You did live there.

Actually, there was this place just down the street from your new flat. It was this little coffee shop. You really liked it there. You got to know the waiters and the owner and you'd walk in every morning and they'd say, "You want the regular?"

One morning you went in with a letter from McGonagall – she had some questions about the memorial and other things, like there was a broken toilet, who should she call for that? Or did you remember when Professor Flitwick said he would need those other books by? It was quite a novel, actually.

You were pouring over it, trying to make sure that you covered everything, trying to even _remember_ everything.

The waiter came over and asked you what you wanted.

You told him the regular.

He laughed.

You looked up and realized that you didn't know him. He apologized for not knowing your regular, but he was new there. It was his first day. He wanted to know what your regular was so that he would know in the future.

You laughed, too, told him what you wanted, and added your name in after that. You couldn't have him being the only waiter there that didn't know your name.

By the end of July, you were in love and spent almost all of your time with him.

But he was a Muggle. And you worked out at a wizarding school. You couldn't even tell him where you would be going when fall came. Actually, you were supposed to be back at school in two weeks. Two weeks? You couldn't even visit him often because how would you explain that you worked at a boarding school in Scotland but could show up in London in no time at all?

So you left him with the promise of visits almost every other weekend. McGonagall needed you, demonstrated by her frequent letters. The school needed you, demonstrated by the fact that the letters were even being written. You had held this school together for so long. You were loyal to the school. You couldn't just abandon it because you met some guy.

Even if you loved him.

Even if you might have just maybe even wanted to spend the rest of your life with him.

In November, he came right out on a visit and asked if this was what it would be like forever – summers together, the rest of the year apart. Because he didn't think he could live like that. So you broke up.

Over the next month, you thought and thought and thought and thought.

In the end, you told McGonagall that you were done at Hogwarts. You'd put it back together – that had been your job. Your job wasn't to take care of broken toilets. That wasn't what you wanted for your life. It wasn't just because of him. You supposed that you'd unconsciously known your time was up when you went to London that summer. Recovery was over – and so was your position there.

But what you had learned is that you liked to be in charge of things, that way other people couldn't screw things up even after you put in all of your effort. You started looking for help wanted ads in the Daily Prophet, and eventually you found just what you were looking for: a coordinator at St. Mungo's. You wouldn't be working with patients – you'd be organizing what doctors were supposed to be where and where there were empty rooms and all of that stuff and you couldn't wait.

You helped McGonagall find a replacement. It was another Squib, just like Filch. But she was different. She was more like you because she was ready to work her butt off. She would have been in Hufflepuff, just like you.

And at the end of the year, you went back to London and moved into your boyfriend's flat and you started working at St. Mungo's, and two years later you were married, and he knew you were a witch and loved you anyway. Before you knew it, you were sending your own kids off to Hogwarts.

Two of them were in Hufflepuff.

**Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!**

**~writergal24**


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